What It's Like: One family's A-Z journey through Autism

How This Came To Be

In honor of Autism Awareness month in April 2015, I made a conscious choice not to light it up blue. I instead started a project to raise my own awareness on my small little corner of Facebook by lettering each day A-Z and sharing a little bit what autism is and what autism isn’t and how things might look a little behind closed doors to my friends who might not otherwise get that glimpse. For those of us with kids on the spectrum, Autism blogs can be a little banal…we all know our stories and the stories of our brothers and sisters on the same journey and there are already wonderful writers out there speaking my language. But as my family became more comfortable with the safety of Facebook, a change took place in the folks around me. I started to understand that the wrong kind of awareness exists. People don’t understand Autism. People don’t always accept Autism even thought they thought they did. And they certainly don’t hop on Autism mom blogs to understand more. I don’t fault them for that. I would not either. I am a mother of two beautiful boys. We live with Autism and other impairments here and apparently I do a wonderful job of walking through the world making it look like any other parenting…..and their differences looking like any other differences a child might have. While this projection makes everyone around us more comfortable, ultimately, it becomes the elephant in the room. Not just for those who want to ask questions around my silent insistence things are “just the way they are” and by letting my kids think that they are just like everyone else when they are well aware they are not– leaving them wondering why their feelings are incongruent with the reality we try to portray. For this, I will start one more blog A-Z. Its not everyone’s journey in Autism, but it is ours and it has been healing for all of us to say it out loud.